Had my first day in Loudwater studio, great to sort out a space to work and start to get things ready for this new project.
Loudwater is a community art space set up 17 years ago by Vision Homes, its based on an industrial estate just on the outskirts of the old market town of Ludlow.
It offers local people the opportunity to engage in a range of arts and crafts activities in an open studio environment. Its offers a cup of tea and a comfy sofa, a sound recording studio and equipment and comprehensive ceramic facilities on site including a wheel and ceramic kiln.
I’m starting to gather door handles for the project, ideally I’d like to get as many of these donated locally and we have started a campaign to get this news out to the community. I am also looking for local reclamation yards as well to source some.
I visited local business Shropshire Architectural Salvage today, the place is amazing, full of hidden treasures of every description, the owner was really helpful, Duncan generously donated some of the first door handles for the project.
Its this kind of generosity and community spirit with which this project relies on to really get it off the ground….
With some initial funding secured after a lot of hard work, meetings and form filling, its great to be finally thinking again about creating a new work.
Having taken a career break to raise a family its particularly exciting to be in a studio again and be working on a new project.
The biggest shift artistically is the move from working entirely on my own to the desire and decision to work and create new work and projects more collaboratively.
This year has been extremely busy, setting up a new arts organisation called Storymine, with husband and independent film-maker Peter Summers.
Storymine is a team of professional artists who work collaboratively to create, perform and share artistic works that entertain, inspire, educate and inform.
We use fairy tales, folk stories, global myths and cultural legends as the inspiration, the foundation, for the development of our work.
Portal is the first of two projects that we are undertaking this year. Please check out our website for more information.
http://www.storymine.org
So here it goes!…
I am hoping that this blog will be interesting! ( be kind!)
a chance to unpack some of the ideas as they develop,
and to share the stories, the work and the process…
Let the journey begin…
http://www.emmasummers.com
